A Key Ingredient in Success? Failure, Says CDC Head

The head of the Centers for Disease Control (pictured above) advocates tracking treatments’ failures, as well as successes.

Tracking the outcome of a treatment or prevention program is critical not just to demonstrate that it’s effective, but also to see when it isn’t.

Thomas Frieden, who runs the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, discussed the importance of failure in his talk at TEDMED on Wednesday as a way to keep researchers, doctors and public health officials accountable.

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